Hacker who turned Manning in takes witness stand

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning faces a possible life sentence if he is found guilty of aiding the enemy. His court-martial is taking place at Fort Meade, Md.

Photo: Patrick Semansky / Associated Press

FORT MEADE, Md. — A one-time computer hacker who told authorities that Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was giving information to WikiLeaks testified Tuesday that the soldier never said he wanted to help the enemy.

Manning is on trial for giving hundreds of thousands of documents to the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks.

He pleaded guilty to charges that could bring 20 years behind bars, but the military has pressed ahead with a court-martial on more serious charges, including aiding the enemy.

That charge carries a potential life sentence.

Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker, said he started chatting online with Manning on May 20, 2010, and alerted law enforcement authorities the next day about the contents of the soldier's messages, including his mention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

He said he continued chatting with Manning on and off for six more days.

On cross-examination, Lamo said Manning never told him he wanted to help the enemy and did not express disloyalty to the United States.

“At any time, did Pfc. Manning ever say he wanted to help the enemy?” defense attorney David Coombs said.

“Not in those words, no,” Lamo said.

Prosecutors have said they will show that the 25-year-old Army intelligence analyst effectively put U.S. military secrets into the hands of the enemy, including Osama bin Laden.

They said they will present evidence that bin Laden requested and obtained from another al-Qaida member the Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department cables published by WikiLeaks.

The soldier from Crescent, Okla., has said he did not believe the information would harm the U.S. and that he released the information to enlighten the public about the bitter reality of America's wars.

His attorney has said Manning struggled with gender identity early in his tour of duty, when gays couldn't openly serve in the military.

Those struggles led Manning to “feel that he needed to do something to make a difference in this world,” Coombs said.

Lamo testified that Manning had contacted him because of his notoriety in the hacking community and because of his open support and leadership in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Lamo pleaded guilty in 2004 to computer fraud after he was arrested for hacking the computer networks of the New York Times and Microsoft. He was sentenced to six months of house arrest and two years of probation.

Manning's case is the most high-profile prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on those who leak information. It's also by far the most voluminous release of classified material in U.S. history, and certainly the most sensational since the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.